


Wishing Never Solved A Thing

by TheBlindBandit



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Baby Steven Universe, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied Amethyst/Vidalia, Implied Pearl/Rose Quartz (Steven Universe), Implied Rose Quartz/Greg Universe, Too Far, War Stories, brief mention of alcohol use, nobody tells amethyst anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14197848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlindBandit/pseuds/TheBlindBandit
Summary: Amethyst sees and understands far more than anyone gives her credit for.General melancholy and all sorts of messy feelings, spanning over years.





	Wishing Never Solved A Thing

They’ve been here for millennia, but sometimes, watching them like some sort of curiously stalking outside observer, it seems to Amethyst like they may as well have landed on the planet yesterday.

Rose is prone to bursting into the temple, all flushed, wide-eyed wonder, chattering incessantly and _oh, well, yes, she said_ _she’d keep more of a distance from the city’s inhabitants, but they’re all so **interesting** and she couldn’t help herself, and this one she met today-_

There’s an audible suppressed cringe in Pearl’s voice whenever she deigns to speak up about _the humans_ , but Amethyst is grateful she’s at least stopped with the whole “Earthling” business she had going on for quite a few annoying centuries. Though, if pressed, she’s been known to acknowledge that _yes, their ingenuity and perseverance in the face of their many limitations are admirable, and they certainly do show tremendous potential for such a young and short-lived species_.

Garnet mainly just shrugs them off, as long as they’re not in immediate danger of being trampled by a rampaging corrupted Gem. The most Amethyst has ever managed to get from her on the subject is a thoughtful _hm_ and, on one momentous occasion, a brief and matter-of-fact confirmation to nobody in particular that _yes, fighting to protect them was the right thing to do_.

Amethyst sits and straddles the fence between the two worlds (often, despite Pearl’s protests, quite literally), and wonders how the three of them ever won a war.

-

This is what Amethyst has gathered:

Garnet loves Rose, and Garnet loves Pearl, and Ruby and Sapphire love each other and Garnet both. But Garnet also loves Garnet, which, in Amethyst’s opinion, makes it all a lot better. She doesn’t need proper education and a true Homeworld Gem upbringing to see that Pearl doesn’t much care for Pearl.

Pearl has eyes for nobody but Rose, and Rose loves her dearly. But Rose says she loves everyone, and sometimes, during one of her prolonged absences and human dalliances, the only way to make Pearl less sad is to make her sad about something else.

Amethyst clambers onto her lap and demands stories of the rebellion, or of the nebulous _Before_ neither of the three normally seem keen on sharing with her. She likes it when Pearl tells her and tries to teach her things, even if she doesn’t show it as much as she perhaps could. Pearl calls them history lessons, but by the way Garnet’s lips sometimes twist as she passes them by Amethyst knows they’re far more than that.

Still make for damn good stories, though.

-

She doesn’t hear how the fight starts, but she catches the tail end of it, on her way back to the Temple from a pretty fabulously productive art session with Vidalia, buzzing with ideas for the cover of Greg’s new album.

“Of course you don’t! You’re all set, forever! _You_ don’t need any of us!” Pearl screeches and storms off, shoving past Amethyst without ever acknowledging her presence.

Garnet doesn’t move save for letting her shoulders slump. Amethyst hears a sigh that sounds a lot like “You have no idea.”

It feels funny, much later - the smarting, bitter kind of funny, not the loud guffaws and rolling around on the floor she loves to inflict on Pearl that always get her nose to crinkle hilariously.

It’s all a very big mess, really. A bigger mess than even she could ever dream of making, with all the magical rooms of infinitely extendable pocket dimensions in the world. A mess of proportions she can’t even begin to imagine when she casually throws an arm around Garnet’s thigh and asks: “What’s up, G?”

“Rose is having a baby.”

-

Pearl still isn’t back.

Rose is all happy and glowy and floaty, even more than her usual highs, and doesn’t want to roughhouse anymore, but still lets Amethyst clamber all over her, and burrow into her hair.

Waxes poetic about a whole bunch of things Amethyst can’t make heads or tails of, too, and picks her up and hugs her so, so tightly when she exclaims, delighted, “Oh, Amethyst, it’ll be wonderful!”

Garnet is increasingly quiet and pensive, and Amethyst sees her do that… that thing she does sometimes when she sits very, very still and gazes intently at nothing and everything - that thing that means she’s sorting through endless variants of the future, along with a deepening frown that all but screams she doesn’t like what she’s seeing. So Amethyst plants herself into her lap, too, and sits facing her, and takes her face between her hands.

“Hey, hey, hey, stay with me, Garnet,” she murmurs, a quiet but firm and determined intervention. “We’ll handle the stuff as it comes. Deal?”

Garnet doesn’t answer. But the frown goes away for the most part, and she puts her arms around Amethyst and holds her very, very tightly.

-

In her most miserable, most mopey moments after it happens, she’s absolutely certain she’s the one who’s lost the most. Like it’s some twisted, horrible kind of competition.

Rose is gone, and so, for every conceivable purpose, is Pearl. Vidalia is busy with her kid - has been for a while now - and now so is… Greg.

Best not to think about Greg.

They haven’t been on missions in what feels like ages. Garnet is mostly away on her own, insisting on shouldering everything and carrying the whole team’s weight and she has no time for fooling around with Amethyst anymore. And Pearl, well…

Best not to think about Pearl.

(she feels the bits of Opal that always stick around and lurk in her wince)

Somehow it seems like everyone always forgets about her. Or maybe they just expect her to roll with the punches, both real and imagined.

She hasn’t missed the packed dirt of her hole this badly in a long, long while.

-

She gives the whole human side of things a shot. She works on her shapeshifting and attempts to “get drunk”, as an experiment. Her blood content needs some balancing to get the intended feeling right, is the conclusion she reaches, and the books she stole from Pearl may be a bit outdated (though the etchings and drawings are pretty sweet). The parties are still a decent enough distraction.

She kisses a human the way she’s seen Rose do it many, many times. It’s ok, she thinks - they’re not Vidalia, but they’re not all that bad. So far, food is still better as these things go, but she thinks she might give it a couple more chances, just to make sure.

It’s not like she has anything better to do, anyway, with the way things have blown up in all of their faces.

Sometimes she catches herself wishing she could just pick someone to blame. Just… take a great big dollop of blame, and _stick_ it on someone’s back; on Greg’s, on Pearl’s, on Rose’s, on Garnet’s, on her own…

It wouldn’t really _do_ anything, but the sound it’d make would be hi-la-ri-ous.

-

Pearl throws herself into things with unparalleled focus and impressive determination – it’s the only way she knows how to do things, really, Amethyst gets it, they all have their Thing. The way Garnet tells it, she threw herself into war, she threw herself into Rose, and she threw herself into grief, and now she’s shown up one day like nothing ever happened, like she hadn’t vanished for who knew how long after that first rough winter, ready, she claims, to throw herself into caring for a human child, for _Rose’s son_.

Greg brushes _her_ off, for a change, and says that that’s a conversation for another time.

Amethyst feels like suggesting some good old rockstar eyeshadow to match those dark circles under his eyes, but the words catch in her throat. Words from some other time, from a _Before_ all her own, buried under worn out sitcom tapes.

-

“Hey there, little guy. Just you and me now, till Greg comes back from the car wash.”

The only response is a gurgle and wiggling of tiny limbs awkwardly stuck in a slightly too big onesie. Maybe he needs encouragement? Sure, he gets doted on day and night, and that might be hard to give up, but Amethyst is sure he has no idea what he’s missing out on.

“Man, no offense, but you’re kinda boring, you know? Can you like, speed up the process a bit? I wanna…”

She leans in over the crib, drawing a bit closer. A more… positive, encouraging angle? Rose would always-

“I wanna… show you stuff, and take you places. And I can’t do that if Greg is about to murder me for like… infant endangerment, if we try to run off with you again. You need to be a bit less tiny for all the cool stuff I have in mind. I think.”

There’s another brief gurgle, and Steven grabs a finger of her hand she’s been dangling over the edge of the crib, and holds fast. It feels absurdly special for something she’s seen him do with literally anything held in front of him long enough, from car keys to weird squishy baby toys.

“You’re not really big on conversation, huh? Hey, that’s ok, you’ll get there. I mean, if you end up anything like your- your mom,” there’s a catch in her throat Amethyst chooses, very deliberately, to not acknowledge in any way, “you’ll see a new kind of lizard on the beach and talk my ear off for the next _week_.”

Funny how you start missing the weirdest things when they’re gone, she thinks. What she’d give for Garnet to just… _stop_ , for a minute, or hour, or even day, when before it was always Amethyst dragging her around and getting her into messes, bored with all that junk about _just_ _being_. What she’d give for a proper, hour-long lecture about some obscure subject Pearl is overly invested in instead of too-tense silences, or hours of sobs that can be heard all the way down to her room while she’s trying to nap, as if Pearl has a monopoly on the world’s sadness.

It feels absurd to hope things will just sort themselves out, but it’s not like there’s much Amethyst could do. Maybe if they all just wait long enough…? Maybe Steven has the right idea after all, and Amethyst is the one missing out.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she rushes to amend, “I didn’t mean to put all this weird pressure on you or anything. It’s fine if you’d rather stay in here for a while, tiny and all - hey, _I_ sure make it work.”

 

—

 

It’s an odd thing to remember, years later. The words with layers of meaning she couldn’t possibly have known - that she still doesn’t feel she understands as well as she should because, well, why tell Amethyst anything _actually relevant_? About her _own literal actual existence_? But whatever.

She thinks she might finally get what Garnet meant, all those times she scolded her for whining, after the “history lessons”, about missing the war, so grand and so glorious - and perhaps it was, for _Pearl_. They don’t give her enough credit for her ability to slot pieces into place quickly and neatly ( _not_ a word that gets associated with her at all). But a picture is emerging now, clearer than any of them ever might have wanted her to have.

Even Rose.

Or maybe _especially_ Rose.

But Peridot rants on and makes them all feel in turns horrible and super accomplished about themselves and it’s clear that for Pearl the war was everything she was never allowed to be, won horribly and violently; something that she could finally claim as hers, scraped together from shards of gems not her own. For Garnet it was everything she never wanted to be, and the one thing everyone expected her to be, or thought her to be.

And Rose, it seemed most days, only wanted to forget what they’d all done.

She thinks of all those holes in the Kindergarten and wonders… how many amethysts had Garnet and Pearl fought off personally? How similar are Gems that share a type, anyway? Do they all look the same? If she went to Homeworld right now, would it be like going to the mirror maze in Funland, with her eyes staring right back, but the rest of her stretched out all funny? Would she see fancy, important-looking Gems parading around the streets - _did it even have streets?_ \- with pearls hanging off their arms, all with the same pointy nose Amethyst makes fun of purely out of habit, the wide, blue eyes that look down on her even when they probably don’t mean to, and the shrill voice so well-suited to scolding?

Back when Pearl recounted heroic victories (even as Garnet’s frown deepened), and bragged about Sardonyx ploughing through enemy forces like they were glass rather than anything even close to diamond, how many of them had borne Amethyst’s face?

When Rose held her close, and rolled down the grassy slopes with her, and got sand all over both of them, and called her _perfect_ -

 

Amethyst warps up onto the Temple’s palm, and lets the familiar sound of the washing machine lull her to sleep.


End file.
